


Like Always

by cold_nights_summer_days



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Games)
Genre: Bitter, Gen, Melancholy, also if your reading these tags ur an amazing person and have a great day, first fic in this fandom, introspective, kinda sad, post Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 15:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18502135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cold_nights_summer_days/pseuds/cold_nights_summer_days
Summary: After returning from the dark jungles of Peru, Lara finds it hard to cope some nights. Its hard to not be bitter when life handed you the shortest stick it could find.





	Like Always

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!! Thanks for clicking on my story, leave your thoughts in the comments if you like! Constructive criticism extremely welcomed.

Lara rolled over for the hundredth time that night, naively wishing it would be the last. The bed was too soft after weeks of sleeping in the dirt and using rocks as pillows. She was afraid she would sink right through to the floor. Not only that, but the room was stuffy compared to the trees she’d spent nights in in the jungle and the open structures of Paititi. Lara was not about to open the window, though. For that she would have to unlock the alarm and lie awake thinking about the possibility of an enemy slipping in through the many access points the Manor offered. 

No, instead she would stay in her too soft bed in her too stuffy room. 

Nights like these, which seemed to be every night, recently, left lots of room in her mind for the thoughts she wished would wash off like the thick Peruvian mud had done in the river. Thoughts of Sam, her father, Jonah. Trinity. 

It was still hard to fathom sometimes that after all Lara had done for Sam in Yamatai, Sam still left her. Lara had saved her from getting her soul replaced, climbed that dangerous ritual temple and fought a literal giant for her. And still, Sam had left. Just like everybody else. 

Well, not exactly everybody. Lara’s brain had reminded her. You still have Jonah. 

At this moment, though, Jonah was in a washed-out town on the other side of the world with Abbey. Lara wasn’t jealous of Abbey; she was jealous of Jonah. Sure, Jonah had been involved with lots of shit over the time he’d known Lara, but he was never the one receiving the brunt of it. Jonah was not the one who had been separated from the group on Yamatai. He was not the one who had fought endless waves of Stormgaurd to save his best friend. He was not the one who was chased by Trinity, attacked in his own home, and then had to destroy the Divine Source. Jonah was not the one who had caused the apocalypse and had to save the world. 

Sure, he had been there for most of that, but he wasn’t the one holding all the blood on his hands and the guilt in his heart. And it just wasn’t fair, because he was Lara’s best friend and she hated being bitter that he had not suffered through that like she had. It was not fair because he was the only one who believed Lara in this whole mess and he was not even around. 

Lara tried to shake the terrible thoughts from her mind, rolling over as if that would make them disappear. Instead her mind only drifted to a darker place. It drifted back to Sam, as it always seemed to. 

Why had she left? That was the one riddle Lara could never find the answer to. She had quit keeping tabs on Sam in the months following Siberia, thinking maybe it was finally time to let go. Jonah probably would have agreed with her, if he had known she had been doing it. You need to move forward with your life, Lara. He’d said to her once, before Trinity had been uncovered and Lara’s life had been completely ruined. It was in the days after the return from Yamatai, when she could never sleep through the night and left on every light in the manor. It had stung then, and it still stung now, but it was true. It was hard to move when you needed therapy, but every therapist you might go to would send you straight to the inpatient program. 

The wind rustled in the trees outside, breaking Lara free from her thoughts. The sound seemed far away, muffled by the old bricks of Croft Manor. It was not completely dark outside, the combination of street lights and the approaching dawn comforting in a way. Soon enough, it would be daylight, and Lara would greet the day as if the night hadn’t bothered her at all. Just like always.


End file.
